An ambitious plan to move roughly 60 former tenants of condemned Bolinas ranch housing into permanent, affordable homes received a major boost last week, when Marin County won $18 million from a state fund established to combat homelessness.
About $8.6 million will go to the Bolinas Community Land Trust, which will use it to support the former Tacherra ranch residents, who moved into an emergency R.V. park next door to the ranch on Mesa Road last October.
The trust reached a purchase-and-sale agreement last month with the receiver who is managing the property, and it plans to replace 23 dilapidated structures there with the new housing. The residents of the R.V. park and the former ranch owners would be given a chance to have an ownership stake in the housing, which would be set up as a cooperative.
“This is a truly transformative grant for the residents of the Bo-Linda Vista R.V. park in their quest for dignified, permanent affordable housing,” said Annie O’Connor, the land trust’s executive director.
About $3.2 million of the three-year grant will be used to help cover the purchase of the Tacherra ranch and begin preparing the site, where the trust plans to build 27 new housing units.
The land trust and its partners will develop the permanent housing with technical assistance from Habitat for Humanity-Greater San Francisco. The trust hopes to break ground on the project in early 2026 and complete construction by the summer of 2029.
“The Encampment Resolution Fund resources will primarily fund improvements to the emergency shelter and connect people to supportive services during the critical period that is required to plan for and construct permanent housing,” the grant application states.
The trust will use more than half of the grant to operate the R.V. park, purchase and upgrade some of the trailers there and provide support for the residents, nearly all of whom are Latino.
Those services would aim to “improve residents’ health, dignity, and safety while they continue to reside at the site,” according to the grant proposal. Some of the money will be used to hire a housing case manager and a health outreach worker. Both staffers would be employed by West Marin Community Services, one of several nonprofits and county agencies supporting the project. They would help residents find medical care and connect them with job training, financial planning and transportation to medical appointments.
The trust expects the project to cost about $18 million, which it plans to raise from a combination of community foundations and state and county grants, including a potential $10 million from the state’s Joe Serna Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant Program, which supports ownership opportunities for agricultural workers.
Buyers of most Habitat for Humanity Homes earn between 50 percent and 120 percent of an area’s median income, but most of the Bo-Linda Vista residents earn no more than 35 percent of Marin’s median income. The land trust plans to offer subsidies to make the homes affordable to all of them.
“We’re offering a new model for West Marin and the state for supporting agricultural workers, their children and their families,” Ms. O’Connor said. “They are the backbone of our economy and contribute to the quality of life that we all enjoy in West Marin. It’s so important to support folks who are not always fully seen or valued for the labor and heart and skills that they provide.”
The Bolinas project is one of three in Marin to receive support from the state’s Encampment Resolution Fund. The county was awarded $6 million to remove and support 65 people from a large encampment at the Mahon Creek Path area in San Rafael and $3.7 million to continue moving 110 people from an encampment along a state right-of-way at Binford Road in Novato.
No new housing is being built in connection with those projects. The county would help people living in them find housing elsewhere, either by offering rent support to those who need short-term assistance or helping those who need long-term aid obtain federal Section 8 housing vouchers.